Category Archives: Blog

This blog feels neglected and I have tried to understand why it is so difficult for me to write for this blog. For one thing, this was meant to be a group project of writing advice and writing events. But that never took off.

I still have thousands of posts reblogged and collected on my tumblr but replicating that kind of resource on this blog would be more work than one little human here can manage. If you’re interested in writing advice, look at my tag page. As I always say when I come across questions: “I have a tag for that!”

Another thing I could use this site for is as an author page. But that doesn’t really work, does it? It doesn’t have my name in the URL and the title is misleading. I started a blog for me with my author name but it’s not exactly alive yet.

Once that lives, I’ll move Tempting The Dragon over there and continue it from there. This site will see the occasional update about writing and I still hope to convince someone to do it with me but it won’t become a collection of writing advice. I have my tumblr for that.

I’ll still link to all the projects I’m doing, like the fairytale anthology and the erotica short piece I wrote. And when I’m finally done with designing my plotting workshop, it will go up here too.

Like this:

So I tried to start with Rachel Aaron’s system but I didn’t make any progress. I still only have a vague idea of my plot and my characters, and instead of helping me developing them, following a structure felt too rigid for me. I just couldn’t do it. I wrote down some notes but soon had run dry.

In my desperate search for help I listened to a few episodes of the writingexcuses podcast. I don’t know which episode it was but Dan Wells talked about how he starts writing the story to get a feel for it before he writes down his plot.

That sounds absolutely perfect! The vague idea grows as I’m writing and while I do that, I collect notes and outline snippets in a separate document. That process is actually pretty much how I write fanfiction, that’s probably why it feels so familiar.

Currently we have Camp NaNo to write our novels but writing this story will take much longer than a month. This will be a project for at least half a year if not more. But it will be a learning opportunity because I intend to apply the various flavors of writing advice I collected over the years to this story.

As part of this process and to force myself to keep going at it, I’m posting the story here under the category Dragon.

So basically, I’m publishing the story as it grows. Is that wise? Probably not. I never said that I am wise. I’m posting my unedited first draft for everyone to see and that’s a big No No. What if I need to retcon something, make huge changes? What if I want to publish it as a book and it exists in this alpha form here? You know, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.